taking the reins….2-27-23

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Evaluate and treat:  3 X a week for 6 weeks

So would read any number of prescriptions at the physical therapy clinic I owned.  The patient came in for assessment and then returned on the regular for hands on treatment and exercise progression.  Not unusual for this prescription to be renewed at least once.  Discharge was the ultimate goal, but there was no hurry.

This frequency was good for business, but over the years frustration was brewing underneath.  Increasingly I was present to the subtle way this frequency sabotaged the patient’s ability to take the reins of their own healing.  It felt like, for lack of a more tactful phrase, physical therapy babysitting.  And being a participant in this dynamic began to eat away at my soul.

So I sold that clinic and slowly, organically shifted to an entirely different business model.  In the fertile 3 year interim before I built the studio over my garage, I treated people on the fly, hauling my treatment table here and there.  The dual qualities of efficiency and agency began to intertwine and a more relevant way to provide health care emerged.   Both the patients and my soul thrived with this change.

Mostly I treat patients once or twice or thrice.  Our first consideration is to insure that commitment to healing is strong and, even more important, there is real excitement about taking the reins. What does that mean in practical terms?  To see me one-on-one there’s only one requirement: show up on your home mat twenty minutes most days for two weeks following that first visit and do the movements we phone video record.  That way, as you track shifts in your symptoms, we find out together if you’re on the right track.

Hands on follow-up visits are for progression, adjustment, modification.  And even when we arrive at a satisfying completion, things change over time.  People come back for tune-ups as needed.  A handful come for more frequent support: weekly for a bit or monthly.  Is this a lucrative business model?  Absolutely not.  Do I care?  No. There is such incredible freedom and honor and responsibility to be beyond that point in my life.

So let’s get a little more specific…..because it’s interesting how often our journey begins or eventually comes around to the psoas. Check this picture out:

Did you know they call this muscle the “first responder”?  Because in moments of perceived threat, the psoas comes on line to help you fight or run or maybe just freeze. Known as storage locker for stress and trauma, for me, in my medicine work, it holds the literal center. This Sunday afternoon I’ll be at Summer Moon Yoga for Centered: me & my psoas, a two hour dive into the belly. A golden opportunity to go in there with expert guidance usually available only in one-on-one appointments.  A focused chance to feel, breathe, viscerally touch this place where gut instinct arises.  We have two tender loins (psoas’) and they differ from side to side.  Tending that difference is quite often a pivotal healing touchstone. Come with your curiosity, bring a roller if you have one.  I’ll have additional props and plenty of gentle wisdom to share.

If this is your time to take the reins I would be honored to be your coach and witness and biggest fan.  You inspire me every single day.

❤️Bella

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cautionary tale, family saga, skin as metaphor….2-22-23

Is this a cautionary tale?  Family saga?   Exploration of skin as metaphor?  Without really knowing I’ll just begin as I sit here recouping from yet another Moh’s procedure.  If you know what this means, I’m sorry.   Having been the recipient four times in twenty years, I’m way too familiar.  Twice a year Mr. Dermatologist inspects for dry scaly areas, which he painfully freezes so new healthy tissue has a chance to emerge.

Sometimes these lesions require biopsy.  The dreaded squamous cell diagnosis means the skin cancer has gone deep.  On to Moh’s surgery where each layer of visible cancer is removed one at a time and microscope checked.  They continue cutting away until the the wound margins are clear.  So now I have a dime-sized crater in right shin and enough medical knowledge to know that lower leg wounds heal very slowly due to poor circulation.  Do not fracture your tibia!  This tender hollow aches under pressure and I am called to ghastly wound care once daily but other than that I am good to go.

Except I’m left to wonder about the meaning of this recurrent condition.  Left pondering the energetic quality of skin, this organ that completely envelops my being.  The ultimate line of defense between me and the rest of the world.  What does it mean that this flesh wall does not hold?  With all that I’ve learned about my history of being defended, with all the work I’ve done peeling away layers, with all my willingness to allow my vulnerability to show.  Is this some metaphorical sign from the universe that I’ve gone too far?  Not far enough?  I sure don’t know.  Just musing.

The intriguing story is that the medical roots of this issue reach all the way back in time to when those very lines of defense were arising.  Being carefully constructed layer by layer in order to survive a childhood fraught with peril.  And the truth is that, hand in hand with the peril, there was beauty as well. Because my mom and dad were deeply in love with the wilds of California and they fed me with this love.  Each spring my dad pored over topographical maps of the Eastern Sierras and every summer of the 1960’s we’d head out to Lone Pine or Bishop for two weeks of raw down to earth adventure.

Now, mind you, this was way before backpacking was a thing.  For us, there was no tent, no stove, no water filter.  We would just dip cups into rivers, cast fishing lines into pristine lakes, cook over fire, lay flannel bags out under the stars.  It was a literal paradise and these experiences instilled an intense appreciation for all things outdoors.  Ironically though, it was all those hours of high elevation sun exposure that set the stage for Moh’s.  This was before sunscreen and I never wore a hat…note picture above.  The cautionary part of this tale? Climate change makes sun exposure ever more perilous.  Sigh.

So there you have it: cautionary tale, family saga, skin as metaphor all wrapped up together.  Make of it what you will.  And may it serve to set you wandering/wondering about your own body tales. The weaving of history with the unique challenges each of us face over the arc of a lifetime.  Fascinating.

❤️Bella

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it’s all medicine…2-2-23

I guess you might say I’m a medicine woman, deeply connected with the wide array of sacred ways we nurture our health and alleviate our suffering…all things healing. The dictionary defines medicine as a practice, as if with enough repetition you might get it right some day. I know I’ve been at it for more than fifty years and I’m still learning on so many levels.  This afternoon, up in my studio, I’ll meet a new patient with a shoulder problem, lean into all I know, stay open to emerging creative freshness.  In class tomorrow morning I’ll share ways to create fluid pain free feet and connect them powerfully to our bellies.  All the while attuned to those present, ready to shift on a dime if something different is needed.  On the dance floor last night I weaved a dose of how to stay present when things fall apart.   It is all a practice of medicine.

And I believe it is a calling, one I heard oh so long ago.  My sister was born six years after me.  I delighted in, loved this young sib and it was so child-like painful to watch my mom become increasingly concerned with her slow development.  I unconsciously absorbed what it means to be a family in crisis.  I felt suffering first hand on the most cellular level.  And I grew up on a mission to alleviate it.  Never waivered.  Of course, practicing medicine is not for everyone.

On Take Your Daughter to Work Day 1993, my thirteen year old came along with me.  Over the years she’d been with me at clinics but had never watched me work with patients.  She trailed me room to room, observing as I took histories, examined patients in motion, laid hands on for treatment.  She was atypically quiet as we drove home, so I nudged.  “So what do you think about the work I do?”  Without hesitation she shot back “Your job is so disgusting!”

I could see how a thirteen year old might come to that conclusion.  This work means stepping into rooms with complete strangers, suspending all judgment, listening to stories, attuning to bodies, touching in the most intimate places.  It is all that plus sensitizing to the nuances of developing relationships.  And it is all this plus feeling into the choice points, the this or that of treatment decisions based on everything you’ve learned so far. Even as you acknowledge the depth of the unknown. It is only 50% science.  The rest is art.

How clearly I recall that six year old aching artist, the one who ended up dedicating a lifetime to healing. As a teen I read with wonder about Florence Nightingale and hospital candy-striped.  My first physical therapy job was with handicapped children. Sometimes it takes decades to develop perspective.  I didn’t realize the roots of this calling until way later.   Maybe concurrent to my first exposure to Buddhism 101.  I was blown away by the four noble truths: there is suffering; there is a cause of suffering; there is an end to suffering; the way out is the eightfold path.

We all suffer.  In ways big and small.  In our aching bodies.  In our vulnerable hearts.  In our crazy-making minds.    And alleviation of that is my jam.  I absolutely love this work in the world.  Come be with me: on the mat, on the dance floor, on the treatment table.

Bella 🙏🏼

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women talking…1-17-23

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I was blessed by a pair of cinema angels this past week.  She Said and Women Talking on consecutive evenings, films that courageously dive into sexual harassment/abuse.  Minimal time is devoted to the actual perpetrators or the acts of violence.   Because the focus is on the women: directed by women and giving voice to women, just as the titles indicate.  Powerful.  Highly recommended.

There is a scene in She Said, the two young journalists who broke the Harvey Weinstein story quietly sharing a meal in a restaurant.  A man approaches and does that yuk overt coming on thing.  They are polite at first but he is unfazed.  He persists.  Until finally one of them stands up, looks him right in the eye and shouts “F—k off!”  Which he does.  I get chills recalling it.

Because here’s the deal.  I clearly remember the moment in 1968 when I first heard the word feminist.  Like it was yesterday.  It registered in every bone of my body, a young woman, first time considering that gender inequality was real.  Realizing all the implications and how that had played out in my short life thus far.  And I remember through young adulthood and middle age coming frustratingly face-to-face with all that meant.  And at least having a label for it.  Twenty years down the road, in 1988, exasperation fueled my exit from a job.  A clinic dominated by a man that did everything he could to keep me small.  I ended up starting my own business.  Which was a brilliant move.  But did I ever stand up, look him right in the eye and shout “F—k off!”  No.

Because I knew about gender based inequality but, at that point in history, did not have the support, the language or the skills to express myself in a healthy constructive way.  It is incredibly heartening to bear witness to women in mid-life right now.  Women who have support, language and skills.  Women who are willing to make what was once only a notion into a reality.  And the next generation?  OMG.  No bullshit allowed.  Period.  So much hope for the future.

The range of problems stemming from gender inequity is steep, running the gamut from disrespect to brutality.  I’ve been lucky in this regard.  Am I comparing utter lack of regard in the workplace to acts of physical violence?  No.  Do they stem from a related root?  Yes. There are so many ways to view this complex issue.

This week I want to use the lens of boundary to investigate this cultural hot button.  We are humans in need of safety.  We create lines to protect our personal well-being.  Sometimes those lines are hard and fast and clear.  Sometimes those lines are squishy and confused or faint.  Those lines change on a dime and those lines are person and situation dependent.  And people, regardless of gender, step over those lines in such a creative variety of ways.  From blatant and overbearing to subtle and manipulative.

In any given moment a thought and/or an emotion can signal us to create a line.  If you know me, you know what’s coming here.  A truly authentic response in the moment originates in the body.  It is a signal throbbing deep down in belly, insistently pounding in chest.  We can learn to trust those sensations with practice.  It’s what I love about the dance floor.  We practice with our bodies.  I’m not sure how many times I’ve facilitated this embodied exploration of yes/no/boundaries.  A dozen?  But it is always fresh and alive.  It lives in the heart beat, the pulse, the rhythm of staccato.  It is a practice in polarity.  It is a practice of the physical expression of thought and feeling.

Come out to Wednesday Waves and feel this with me.
❤️Bella

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your own brilliant magic…1-12-23

River waters nudge the levee.  Wind borderline terrifying.  Windows pelted, elder trees topple.  Grateful for bodily safety but my heart aches and my spirit feels damp as the yard.  Pervasive grey outside matches my inside.  Winter is not my happy-joy season. I’ve learned to appreciate the gifts darkness bestows.  Just not today, thank you.

Now I could run this story line all day.  Or all week.  Or until spring delivers us.  But, if I’m honest, the physical yuk—chest knot, leaden belly, shoulder sag, teary—didn’t last that long.  Once I let it have its way with me.  Here’s what we know: the felt experience of emotion, the actual physiological response time, is about 90 seconds.  Any additional time is about resisting or running with the story.  Really.

Once I let it have its way with me.  Well, what exactly does that mean?  Here’s the simple: be with the experience of breath and physical sensation in the present moment.  Oh that.  But really, take a moment.  Consider the multitude of ways these bodies speak.

Can I open my eyes right here, take in the whole room?  What sound is audible? What’s the weather report inside my chest and belly?  Speedy? Still? Spacious? Chilly?  Constricted? Hot?  My breath: easy, shallow, holding, fast, deep, gaspy, labored?  Signals emanate from all the parts: head to spine to tail to hips to thighs to shins to feet.  Heartbeat to shoulders to elbows to hands.  Organ body, orifices, thirst/hunger/taste in the mouth/smells.  How is my left side compared to right and which way is north? How is my body arranged on this chair and can I feel the pull of gravity? What’s it like right in my smack dab center?

This is the physiology, the fire of neurons, language of our body.  And I’ve been ruminating about this language and how it informs spirit.  The term spiritual transcendence has some relevance here. Transcendence: from the Latin trans-, meaning “beyond,” and scandare, meaning “to climb.”  A spiritual state of moving beyond physical needs and realities.  Many have chimed in about this elevated state.  So many!  I love Viktor Frankl’s concise definition in Man’s Search for Meaning:

  1. a shift in focus from self to others
  2. a move away from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation
  3. an increase in moral concern and (as a result)
  4. a preponderance of emotions like awe, ecstasy, amazement

Indeed.  What a beautiful list.  Who doesn’t want that?  I’ve also been curious about the look-alike: not transcendence, but spiritual bypass.  I’m pretty sure we’ve all been in the presence of or (yikes!) heard ourselves spouting bypass-ese.  Using spiritual concepts to avoid emotional challenge.  Like hearing the response  “love and light” in the face of someone’s acute grief.   Or using spiritual phrases as shiny defense mechanism.  As in, “rising above” when confronted by an angry being.  Dismissal instead of resolution.  Glossing over rather than working through.

When we actually stand in the presence of grief, listen as the body speaks, feel 90 seconds of sensation crash over us…an authentic response has a chance to emerge. If we stay with rage’s physical discomfort for a full minute and a half we might set a clear boundary.  Spiritual bypass? Maybe it originates in physical bypass.  And the corollary: spiritual transcendence and all the promise it holds…deeply rooted in physical presence.

This is my experience.  I’m about the body.  Holding space in a variety of ways with infinite invitations to go in, track, stay in, tend, come back, notice.  And you can count on this: the truth of all the feels, the beauty of authentic insight, that divine shift in devotion from self to others, both motivation and morality deeply personal—all that emerges from a cellular level. With roots deep in these earthly bodies, spirit has an accessible physical conduit to render joy, to light us up in awe, to baptize us in wonder.

“And that is the purpose of the presence and the power of this work-
there is nothing more beautiful than seeing someone
turn on to their own divinity.”    Gabrielle Roth

When I’m with you on the treatment table or the yoga mat or the dance floor…there is nothing more incredible than witnessing you turn on to your own brilliant magic.  Thank you for all those moments.

❤️Bella

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true, necessary, kind…..1-1-23

Intention          Resolution          Pledge         Commitment
A weighty tradition, a call to action, tethered to year’s end….
Reflection         Contemplation         Musing         Meditation
Days damp chill, balanced by marathon nights…I dream

Rain and snow cancelled tentative plans, nestled me snuggle-worth at home.  And I’ve been gently reflecting.   This paper scrap has been in a prominent studio spot since July, softly nudging through the second half of 2022.

Right Speech: a Buddhist precept encouraging mindfulness as we say those words, express that thought, offer that opinion.  What does it mean to only speak truth? To refrain from gossip or harshness?  To avoid useless speech?  After the fact, I catch myself time and again having engaged in less than mindful speech.  Chagrin…may be a fine prompt for awakening.

That paper list nutshells it for me.  Six months of random observation has revealed a few things.  Foremost?  Ironically, my life long attachment to truth-telling can get me in trouble.  Just because something is true does not mean it needs a voice. Truth can be a slippery slope that can deliver an utterance less than caring.  I guess we all know how awful it feels to wish we could take back what we just said.

Here’s another piece: my aging brain is slowing a bit.  In group conversation flying fast and furious, sometimes it’s too much effort to contribute.  I can track and enjoy the dialogue, but the speed to articulate a response has decreased.  The moment to participate passes before I’m ready.  When I just relax into this shift, I realize that mindful listening,  the sister to mindful speech, is in itself a valuable contribution.  What a great skill for an opinionated person to cultivate.

One more piece: is it the right time?  Indeed, it might really be true and absolutely necessary.  And there is a kindly way to express it.  But “is it the right time” takes “necessary” to the next level.  The impact of language is so woven with timing.  All those child-raising years…such oft-repeated practice.  Learning the hard way to hold my tongue in situational heat.  Better to wait.  Better to save it for the tender moment it might be received with ease.

If we turn our lens to the use and abuse of  the written word on social media, all of the above is super-conspicuous.  The propensity for lies to multiply, for content to expand beyond our capacity to absorb, for hate to proliferate becomes exponential.  Imagine a world where posts are screened for truth, for necessity, for kindness.  Hmmm…..

So though I am not big on resolution, this musing is front and center as I step into the unknown of 2023.  So much came to pass in 2022…some delightful, some awful, some meh. Trusting 2023 will deliver to each and every one of us just exactly what is necessary and what is true.  And may it be delivered with a huge dollop of kindness.

❤️Bella

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“not all those who wander are lost”…12-20-22

The altar space pictured above organically emerged in my studio in 2020 right along with Covid.  Just know that visual creativity is not my artistic go-to expression.  So it’s intriguing that installations, the visual imagery that sets the tone for 5Rhythms sessions, have ramped up in fascination for me over the years.  Just recently personal time in this studio suffered a too long hiatus.  Travel, a nasty cold, heater on the fritz…I yearned for self care moments up there that sustain me on the regular.  Sigh.

But finally, on Saturday, I turned to the west wall, where all my salvaged treasures await: bones and shells, rocks and wood, textured fabrics and feathers, little sculptures and hearts of all kinds.  A lot of this and plenty of that.  Sometimes something moving in me calls for concrete form.  But this time I created right out of the empty space, trusting what emerged each step of the way.  First a branch turned into a white cave.  Then a rock became a throne for a reclining goddess from Santiago.   Moss from New Brighton Beach.  Bird spine perfectly echoing goddess spine.  Bird skull meticulously fastened to branch with chunk of glue stick.  In my utter trance I knocked over a full tea thermos. I threw the toweled wet mess off the landing and glanced down to spy last year’s Halloween raven mask.  Of course.  Sometimes it happens just like that.

And sometimes I pull a card from the Osho deck and ask, “What do you have to tell me about this creation?”  I already had my own thoughts on that question, but I spread the cards face down on the floor, hovering over the choices with my receptive left hand.  Finally I zeroed in on one card that just did not want to come out of the deck, avoiding my finger grip with a tenacity that made me double down my effort.  Clearly that was the one!

And there it was: the Completion card, final image in the Major Arcana. I just about lost it.  A few excerpted words here:

“… in the ever-changing flow of life there are moments we come to a point of completion….we are able to perceive the whole picture…either be in despair because we don’t want the situation to come to an end, or we can be grateful and accepting…that life is full of endings and new beginnings.  Whatever has been absorbing your time and energy is coming to an end.  In completing, you clear space for something new to begin.  Use this interval to celebrate both—the end of the old and the coming of the new.”

Indeed. Isn’t this exactly the time of year we dial ourselves in to those flow of life seasonal shifts?  The heavens gift us with transitions based in the whole picture eternal. The sun so south-low blankets our northern hemisphere in darkness, a twilight that reflects all that is ending, in completion, finished.  Damp ground moulders and incubates all that has been shed. I trust that mouldering, this interval, this gestation.  It was Tolkein who wrote:

“All that is gold does not glitter,
not all those who wander are lost.
The old that is strong does not wither,
deep roots are not reached by the frost.”

A Zoom call this morning included a meditation to engage in active wishing.  Wishing felt a bit exotic, like I was granted permission to be in youthful delight.  Yet in this child like reverie I noticed the notion of inspiration arise.  Not just for me, but for you, for us, for this needy planet.  Inspiration fueled by wonder, stoked by an imagination released from the need to take immediate action.  Inspiration fueled by wander, by playful meandering, by casting about without fear of disappointment or failure or expectation.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and all science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger,
who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
Albert Einstein

And so, as this year, this season, this whatever draws to a close, the perception of conclusion, of endings, may surface for each of us in its own distinct way.  My wish?  May we open our eyes to the mystery inherent in this moment of completion.  May we grant ourselves a proper pause.  May we be gifted with revelations nourished by un-tethered wonder and the joy of haphazard wandering.

May it be so….and bountiful wishes of healing and holiness to you and yours.

Love, bella

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a bit of a legacy…11-30-22

Summer 2021: I begin to save recordings of Roll, Release, Align on-line.  The sessions seemed to have value for students beyond our together practice.  They report ease in breaking 90 minute sessions into shorter practices.  Or the support of repeating classes in their entirety.  So I begin to build a library.

By the time I stopped teaching in September, 55 classes had gathered themselves, arranged in eight anatomically inspired chapters.  Teaching principles of loose, long and strong has been in evolution in one form or another since 1983.  Imparting this knowledge is starting to feel a bit of a legacy.   This life-long work in progress is a living breathing organism, always growing as I track my own internal experience and observe responses in yours.  Sensation, injuries, reaction and adaptation to new techniques, total curiosity…so much keeps it ever fresh. This particular on-line year is a snapshot of that continual evolution as we travelled through the entire body.

Each class has every element needed for optimal self-care:  release with balls and rollers, core strength, stretching tightness, a bit of yoga asana.  Visuals, music, poetry to spark an embodied imagination.  If you’re intrigued about how to enter this richly resourced world of self-care, there are many easy ways to slide in:

The Triplet:
Whenever the mood strikes, I’m creating three short videos focused on a particular body region.  The current triplet is about the rib cage.  I like the Swedish translation: heart basket.  Because we want this body part to be more like a basket and less like a cage!  Roll out your mat, give it a try.  Let it inspire.  This content is free.  Next up when the mood strikes?  A loose, long and strong psoas.

Intro to the Essentials:
The slow and easy basics—four one hour classes—digest at your own pace for free.  Care for your unique and beautiful body…it’s a pleasure!  Feel confident when you come to your mat, with or without the support of a teacher.  Learn the basic skills utilized in Video Library classes.  I’ll guide you through the essentials: foam rolling, tennis ball releases, core strength, stretching out.  After just one session roll your mat out at home with self-assured expertise.  Props you need at this LINK.

A One-on-One moment:
Many students come for individual physical therapy either before they begin practice or as they run into roadblocks along the way.  In a single session, in person or on-line, we suss out your unique challenges.  This paves the way for you to practice with workable modifications AND clearly focuses you on your unique asymmetries.  Not a one of us is perfectly balanced!  Practice is so much more interesting and productive when there is a felt sense of the particulars.

The Video Library:
Watch the short introductory video, choose a chapter and then take your pick of classes.  Feel the evolution doing them in chronological order.  Classes toward the end give you a feel of practice in its more current form, launch point for the upcoming live offering. By monthly subscription.

LIVE:

Release and Realign:  free preview Friday December 16 10:00 at Clara Auditorium. Enter parking lot from O St. ‘tween 24th & 26th St. Turn left, enter brown double doors.  Drop in fee $20 starting January 6.  Bring mat, 3 foot roller, two soft balls, two pair wrapped tennis balls, two blocks, blanket, strap.  Props available for purchase for preview class and each Friday morning in January.

Tune Up Your Moving Body: committed series at Yoga Shala Saturdays Feb 4, 11, 18 12:00-1:30.  Limited to 16 students.  Registration link coming soon.

The time is ripe.  So many ways to enter into the pleasure of self-care.  And speaking of pleasure….I experienced such a brilliant session as a student at Sunday Sweat Your Prayers.  We dance for so many reasons and transcendence is not at the top of my list.  But there it was, a total dissolve moment. No separation between me and you and us. And of course, then it was gone. The realization of meaning is only an echo of the actual experience.  But the physical memory of this universal truth, this felt sense of non-duality, is anchored in my bones. The reverberations bring me enormous pleasure.  5Rhythms dance 2022 runs through December 18 before we break until January 8, 2023.

This life-long work in progress is a living breathing organism, always growing as I track my own experience and yours. Ever fresh. Knowledge filtered through experience occasionally translates to a bit of wisdom.  Sharing that, offering whatever happens to come through feels a bit of a legacy.

❤️Bella

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golden milestones…11-21-23

It was autumn ’72 when I graduated from UCSF medical school, clutching a degree in physical therapy, pretty much clueless about the journey to come.  It would be another thirty years before persistent dabbling in yoga and dance would begin to fully inform this chosen vocation.  I had no idea that the nature of this work was evolutionary.  No notion that it might look different fifty years down the road.

A few weeks after graduation I landed in pediatrics in Sacramento and my boyfriend, hard at work on the McGovern campaign, joined me here. We were footloose and ready for about anything, thrilled to move into a big house on 7th Avenue after living in a string of small apartments.  We had some nebulous plan about staying in this cow town three years and then moving to where we really wanted to be.  We had no idea we would still be here fifty years down the road.

On Thanksgiving Day we married in that 7th Avenue house. Twenty-five people witnessed this relatively spontaneous ceremony and joined us for a veritable feast of giving thanks spread on a ping-pong table.  Many of those people are gone now, but I wonder how many present imagined that those two hippy-dippy kids would still be married fifty years down the road.

I was twenty-two!  When I’m around twenty some-things—even my own children are way past that point—I’m uber-conscious of the launch this moment portends.  How the innocent choices made in trusting naivete wield such power.  And I’m also aware that 2022 is different than 1972.  Maybe growing up in the 1950’s hoodwinked me into believing my life would echo my parent’s.  And that my children’s future would look like the one I faced. I likely harbored an assumption that things would kinda stay the same.

But change was all around me.  New concepts whispered their way into the vernacular: ecology, feminism, racial justice.  Radical events spilled in black and white into our living rooms.  Watergate and riots and protests were daily news. The war on drugs ran concurrent with the war in Vietnam. And rock and roll, a continual backdrop to my life, so incredibly revolutionary.  Lots of twenty some-things were actually fueling this change.  I did my share.

The future….maybe always feels tenuous and unpredictable.  We can guess, but we never know what it holds.  But the past—looking back and recognizing how we arrived here—that’s a known. These fifty years have held so much loss and grief, buckets of joy and surprise, oodles of nose to the grindstone, keep on keeping on.

“There is something that happens to us when we practice:
we find we have a bigger perspective on our lives.
This feels almost like a blessing or a gift.”  Pema Chodron

I suppose I’m having a bigger perspective moment.  And this golden milestone, this pinpoint in time, has me reflecting.  There’s been fruition alongside the pain, serendipity in the wake of mistakes, crazy synchronicity and plenty of near misses.  A surprising amount tracks back to those wet-behind-the-ears choices made fifty years ago.  So much has been given as a result of those decisions.  You know, it’s the work of a lifetime to just keep harvesting what we’re given to keep waking up.  Indeed, this golden anniversary feels like a reaping, a gift, a true blessing.

Feeling enormous gratitude for what I’ve been given.  All of it.   This season of darkness might be a good time to reflect on just that.   Quiet moments to cultivate a big perspective, recognize what we’ve been given.  Consider that it might be exactly what we need to awaken.

Blessings on you and yours….Bella

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Body tales…so many chapters…

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Dear Bella,

Oh those body tales of woe…our stories.  Myriad chapters spread over time.  My current troubles began as many do.  Insidiously.  Which the dictionary defines as “proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects.”  Right?  A shadowy ache in forearm, there one day, gone the next.  Elusive then lingering.  Lifting a full tea kettle: ouch.  Tenderness in elbow.  Not  debilitating, but unpleasant, worrisome.  And after wishing it away a bit too long, I deeply massage forearm and that definitely helps.  But right hand starts to complain about so much tedious work.

And then magic happens.  A déjà vu moment that’s regularly recurred in this life dedicated to treating body ailments…mine AND yours.  So I’m minding my own business, tennis ball rolling out my shins when the bulb lights up.  Shin.  Forearm.  Same!  Two parallel bones spanning knee and ankle just like the two bones that connect elbow and wrist.  In a posture of utter supplication, I roll the forearms just like the shins, cruise up into elbow and dig into triceps. Which are, of course, part of the drama.  Such a tearful moment: relief, gratitude, awe…all wrapped into one juicy sensory experience. Quick video:

Here’s the rest of the story.  A variation on this synchronicity has occurred countless times in my work.  The very next morning a young cello player comes to my studio with chronic left forearm pain.  We had work to do in her thoracic spine, scapula, rib cage.  It’s all connected.  But we finished the session with this very technique.  I kid you not.

I am not a traditionally religious person. But every so often I feel god working through me.  Bestowing me with ailments to feel into, move through. And then this gentle nudge to pass the healing magic on.  Is this forearm thing behind me yet?  Well, no.  Just like you I do the self-care I need and then get busy or neglectful or fate-tempting or downright stubborn.  Resistant to the obvious: this body needs consistent care and attention and love.  And then I come back.  Just like you.

It’s that coming back that I am here to support.  Read on a bit about these two juicy things if you want a leg up:

  • About Yoga: a triplet of free videos to inspire you. Pull out your mat and jump start your practice. New offerings on this page as the spirit moves me.  This triplet is to help you foster a rib cage loose, long and strong.
  • Release and Realign: we finally named this Friday morning drop in class that officially begins January 6.  But don’t wait…come out for the free class December 16 10:00 Clara and meet the “we”.

Who is this “we” of rotating teachers?  Kim Wagaman and I met in 2007 at Yoga Solution.  Her openness, attention to alignment and breath and balance and asymmetry, her sparky curiosity and sprinklings of poetry utterly moved me.  Ever since those early days we’ve been mining possibilities.  We’ve taught workshops together and went parallel online when Covid came to call.  Jeanne Munoz was in my teacher group at It’s All Yoga 2012.  As soon as we completed training we collaborated on a Friday night Roll & Release class.  Until she had twins and we had to take a pause.  We knew we’d be back together someday.   It was meant to be.  That day has finally come.

If you have a body tale of woe–a current story or multiple chapters spread over a lifetime, maybe something insidious that is proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, with harmful effects—I’m right here for you.  Did you know that back in my clinical era I used to see 12 patients a day?  That was hecka training.  Now?  One a day.  Love it.  Because it is so nourishing relaxed, focused and creative, spontaneous yet individualized.  So utterly uncompromised.  I adore this work.

No matter where we meet—on the dance floor, on the mat, on the treatment table—-please be welcome.  Join me for a tearful moment: relief, gratitude, awe…all wrapped into one juicy sensory experience.

❤️Bella

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